The topic of my work is basically hydrogen (against petroleum) and that’s why I put the “Oil clock” in this blog, because after doing this project I am aware of the huge problem which is petroleum.
We have to give it on Thursday, the 5th of February, and we have until 18:00. I still remember when I started Batxillerat and teachers said “You have to do it in summer” and they repeated it almost every day. Now, as usual, it hasn’t been finished until the last week.
I think it’s one of the two worst nightmares we will have this year in 2nd of Batxillerat. The other one, of course, is the Selectivitat, also called PAU or university entrance examinations. Now, the first one is, more or less, over, and it’s time to face the second one.
I say “more or less” because it hasn’t finished yet. The 18th of February is the day of the oral presentations, in other words, we have to explain our work in 15 minutes in front of a jury made up of three people that will evaluate the works. This year there have been many works and there’ll be more turns than last year, but now I don’t remember how many turns there are because I am in the first one, between 3:15 and 4:00. Some people say it’s good, because when you finish it you are calm while other people are still nervous. Maybe it’s true... but I won’t believe it until I watch it.
The first picture of this post is one of the images I haven’t been able to put in my work. It’s liquid hydrogen in a bubble chamber. And here I put another one that I think is very interesting but the resolution is a bit low. It shows what happens when a car filled with hydrogen or gasoline burns. If you didn’t know, the first one is the hydrogen car, and the other car contains gasoline.
Do you still think hydrogen isn’t safe?
martes, 3 de febrero de 2009
TDR
domingo, 30 de noviembre de 2008
Gorillaz
This is a video of a song which I liked a lot, but I didn't know what did it mean until today, when I have tried to translate it and I've seen that... it's a bit strange. After the video you have the "translation", I hope you'll enjoy the video.
GORILLAZ: Clint Eastwood
Oh oh oh oh oh
I ain't happy, I'm feeling glad
I got sunshine, in a bag
I'm useless,but not for long
The future is coming on (x3)
Oh oh oh oh oh
No sóc feliç,
em sento alegre,
Tinc el sol en una bossa,
No serveixo per res però
no per gaire temps.
El meu futur s’està acostant. (x3)
Yeah... Ha Ha!
Finally someone let me out of my cage
Now, time for me is nothing cos I'm counting no age
Now I couldn't be there
Now you shouldn't be scared
I'm good at repairs
And I'm under each snare
Intangible
Bet you didn't think so I command you to
Panoramic view
Look I'll make it all manageable
Pick and choose
Sit and lose
All you different crews
Chicks and dudes
Who you think is really kickin' tunes?
Picture you gettin' down in a picture tube
Like you lit the fuse
You think it's fictional
Mystical? Maybe
Spiritual
Hearable
What appears in you is a clearer view cos you're too crazy
Lifeless
To know the definition for what life is
Priceless
For you because I put you on the hype shit
You like it?
Gunsmokin' righteous with one token
Psychic among those
Possess you with one go
Finalment algú em va deixar sortir de la meva gàbia.
Ara, el temps per mi no és res, perquè no tinc en compte els meus anys.
Ara no podria estar allà.
Ara no hauries d’estar espantat.
Sóc bo fent reparacions.
I estic sota cada trampa.
Intangible,
M’hi jugo el que vulguis que no pensaves que jo et controlo.
Vista panoràmica.
Observa, faré que tot sigui manejable,
Escull i tria
Seu i perd
Totes les teves bandes,
Ties i tios.
Qui creus que està colpejant melodies realment?
Imatge que et baixes d’un tub imaginari.
Com tu vas encendre la metxa.
Creus que és fictici, místic? Potser espiritual, audible.
El que apareix en tu és una visió clara, perquè tu estàs boig també.
Sense vida.
Per saber la definició de què és la vida.
Sense preu.
Per tu, perquè et vaig posar en una merda.
T’agrada?
La pistola fumejant justament amb una senyal.
Allò psíquic, entre els altres.
Posseir-te en un moment.
I ain't happy, I'm feeling glad
I got sunshine, in a bag
I'm useless,but not for long
The future is coming on
I ain't happy, I'm feeling glad
I got sunshine, in a bag
I'm useless, but not for long
The future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
No sóc feliç,
em sento alegre,
Tinc el sol en una bossa,
No serveixo per res però
no per gaire temps.
El meu futur s’està acostant.
S’està acostant
S’està acostant
S’està acostant
The essence the basics
Without it you make it
Allow me to make this
Child, like in nature
Rhythm
You have it or you don't that's a fallacy
I'm in them
Every sprouting tree
Every child apiece
Every cloud you see
You see with your eyes
I see destruction and demise
Corruption in disguise
From this fuckin' enterprise
Now I'm sucking to your lies
Through Russ, though not his muscles but the percussion he provides
with me as a guide
But y'all can see me now cos you don't see with your eye
You perceive with your mind
That's the inner
So I'm gonna stick around with Russ and be a mentor
With a few rhymes so mother fuckers
Remember where the thought is
I brought all this
So you can survive when law is lawless
Feelings, sensations that you thought were dead
No squealing, remember
(that it's all in your head)
L’essència és la base.
Sense això ho fas.
Deixa’m fer-ho.
Com un nen a la natura.
Ritme.
O ho tens o no, això és una fal•làcia.
Estic en elles.
Cada arbre que brota.
Cada un dels nens.
Cada núvol que veus.
Veus amb els teus ulls.
Jo veig destrucció i desaparicions.
Corrupció disfressada.
Des d’aquest coi d’empresa.
Ara xuclo les teves mentides.
Des d’en Russ, encara que no els seus músculs sinó la percussió que dóna,
amb mi com a guia.
Però ara em pots veure perquè no mires amb l’ull.
Em perceps amb la ment.
Aquest és el secret.
Doncs em quedaré amb en Russ i per ser un mentor.
Trencar unes quantes rimes, doncs, _______
Recorda on és el pensament,
Jo vaig construir tot això
I tu pots sobreviure quan la llei és il•legal.
Sentiments, sensacions que vas pensar que eren mortes.
No cridis, recorda
(tot és dins el teu cap)
I ain't happy, I'm feeling glad
I got sunshine, in a bag
I'm useless, but not for long
The future is coming on
I ain't happy, I'm feeling glad
I got sunshine, in a bag
I'm useless, but not for long
My future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
My future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
My future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
My future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
My future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
My future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
My future
No sóc feliç,
em sento alegre,
Tinc el sol en una bossa,
No serveixo per res però
no per gaire temps.
El meu futur s’està acostant. (x2)
s’està acostant
s’està acostant
s’està acostant
s’està acostant
El meu futur s’està acostant
s’està acostant
s’està acostant
s’està acostant
s’està acostant (...)
El meu futur.
domingo, 9 de noviembre de 2008
Have a good meal
My favorite food is Chinese food. I haven’t been to China, but I’ve got a lot of Chinese restaurants near my village. Some of them are better than others, maybe because of the recipe, the quality of the food or the sauces. I think sauces are very important and they can decide if a dish is good or not.
In Spain, restaurants offer olives or something to peak at before asking the food. When you go to a Chinese restaurant they usually give you a dish with “shrimp bread”.
Then, you can choose from loads of dishes. For example, spring rolls, seaweeds and chicken, veal or duck prepared wit different sauces. You can try it with rice or noodles, for examples.
Some sauces are very strange, with Chinese words, and you only know the tastes until you try them. But some of them are very typical, common in most of the similar restaurants: The bittersweet sauce is my favorite one. It depends on the restaurant and only some of them have a good sweet and sour sauce, but sometimes it’s only a bad tomato sauce. Oyster sauce is also very common, and it’s good with veal. There’s spicy sauce too. Sometimes it has a very hot taste and you need to drink a lot after it.
There’s a rumor which says that, in Chinese restaurants, dogs are cooked in some dishes. Because of this, some people doesn’t want to try that food. I don’t know if that’s true, but I think it isn’t bad if there are dishes with dog (and they sell it like dog, of course), because we eat things that other cultures never eat and we can’t imagine eating worms or ants, which are some of the main dishes from some countries.
One of the things which I like from Chinese food is to eat it with wood sticks. We are used to eat with forks, knifes and spoons, but with two sticks it’s a curious way to eat. Eating a bowl of rice with wood sticks is a very hard challenge if you haven’t practiced.
That’s been a summary about what can you find in a Chinese restaurant, but I think the only way to know it is to go and try it, because it’s an opportunity that maybe our ancestors didn’t have. One of my advices is that, if you don’t like it at first, don’t say “I don’t like that food” until you had tried three or four restaurants and different dishes. One of the options is to ask for the most popular restaurants and 请享用！(have a good meal!).
viernes, 31 de octubre de 2008
Watch out with ghosts...
It’s not a catalan holiday, but now some people celebrate it. It started in Scotland and Ireland, with the Celtic cultures, and then it arrived to North America, becoming one of the most important festivals of the year. Now it has arrived to the whole world, and it has moved away other traditional festivals.
Some of the typical things on Halloween Night:
Children go door to door trick-or-treating wearing costumes. When somebody opens the door, they say “trick or treat”. If there is a treat, children usually receive sweets or food, but if there’s no treat, they play a trick on the homeowners or on their house.
Another thing to do is to watch a horror film. There are loads of horror films, with ghosts, vampires, zombies, etc. Some of the most recent films are SAW, Final Destination, The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Sleepy Hollow. But there also were horror films in 1930s, like Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931) or The Mummy (1932).
There are some typical symbols and objects, like the pumpkin: People hollow out a pumpkin and then it’s carved and lit with a candle inside. It was used by the Celts to frighten off the superstitions. Nowadays, homes are decorated with pumpkins, skeletons or scarecrows.
Food has got a very important role on Halloween parties and meals. There are very original dishes, from the typical toffee apples to the delicious frightening recipes. If you want some ideas look at that: Fun Halloween foods
These are some of the most common Halloween things. Of course, each country celebrates it in its way, and there are loads of differences between Texas and Haiti, for example. But, in fact, the origin of the holiday is the same, and I think it’s very interesting and curious.
lunes, 20 de octubre de 2008
Lists...
But, for example, look at Dave Freeman’s story: This writer became very famous because of his book, a best seller called '100 Things to Do Before You Die'. There, he made a list with things like to run bulls in Spain, to hang his boots in an ice hotel in Finland, or to make a voodoo pilgrimage to Haiti. He had completed about half of his list when he died... He was 47 and he fall over hitting his head, at his home...
Then, what can you do? Are you sure that you’ll be able to complete a list if there’s the possibility to die trying? Must we stop making stupid lists?
The answer is NO! I’ve found the perfect list, the list you’ll surely do because die won’t stop it: The list of things to do after you die.
So, I’ve found a lot of interesting things to do (well, some of them are interesting and some of them are... you know, when you are dead you have a lot of time...). For example:
- Prove that god exists.
- Scare people at midnight.
- Visit the hell, the heaven and other places from other religions.
- Talk with Einstein about the relativity of time.
- Reflect on how absurd the phrase “I think, therefore I am” is.
- Walk through the walls.
- Experience an exorcism in first person.
- Talk with persons who are playing with Ouija Board.
- See dead people.
- Reincarnate in an animal, like a dog or a fly...
The complete list is here: 50 Things To Do After You Die
And I would add some more, like remember where did you put that list about things to do after you die...
domingo, 12 de octubre de 2008
SPEECH TECHNOLOGY
I think it’s a very useful tool for mute people, because it can express laughs, sadness and other emotions. Now there is a renewed version, but it still needs to advance a lot to reproduce faithfully the human voice.
But it’s got another use: People make videos and they post them in the youtube, and these videos sometimes are jokes or parodies. They make fun of some stupid things like TV serials or social topics.
Here I put a video made with loquendo. In this case, they have used a Spanish voice, simulating it’s learning English.
In the web page of the program there is a demo. You can write a text and then download the audio file.
There’s a software in Windows that wants to do the same, but it’s disastrous. It’s called Sam, and it only speaks in English, but his voice is very strange and sometimes the pronunciation is very bad.
miércoles, 1 de octubre de 2008
THE COUNTDOWN HAS ALREADY STARTED
I think that the result in one hour is very high, but if I look at the year’s consumption I feel dizzy, because it means that this oil burns or becomes rubbish, destroying the environment.
This shows our dependence on petroleum. Our cars run on fossil fuels, most of the clothes are made of petroleum, food is wrapped with plastic from petroleum... If we look around, we can see that we are surrounded by petroleum. We need it, but it isn’t inexhaustible and, if we continue wasting it, it will run out.
Then, I hope this clock will make you aware of the problem we have.
If we want to conserve it, we can help turning off the engine of the car if we are going to stay stopped or using tough and reusable bags to go to the supermarket.
If you aren’t enough aware, watch again the clock, it’s in the right side of the blog.
domingo, 21 de septiembre de 2008
AND I'M STILL HERE
The school year has just started again and I resume the blog. This course will be harder than the last one, and I think that because of two things: we must submit the “Research Work” and we need to prepare for the university entrance exam.
The first week has just finished and I am fed up with these two issues. I think that if we used half of the time we spend saying “we must study”, “we must work”, “we must ...” to make what we really must do (the research work, for example), we would finish it before.
And now, I’m going to stop grumbling and I’ll continue my post.
Throughout this summer I’ve been looking for information for my research work and I’ve read a book which has made me change my point of view about our society. The book is called “The hydrogen economy” (by Jeremy Rifkin) and, well, I admit it is a bit apocalyptical and pessimistic, but I’ve learned that we can’t wait until the end of fossil fuels (if it’s true that it will happen): we need to act and change our habits. Because of this, some of my future posts will be related with this topic (climate change, fossil fuels, etc.). Apart from this, I’ll try to write about funny issues to make it more enjoyable.
Finally, I want to change a little bit the face of the blog with some gadgets (I’ve said “a little bit”, I don’t want to write in a circus =/).
Well, that’s all for today, bye!!
